1) Yes. Does a lot more damage (3*base or more).
2) For any fully identified weapon, just pressing i/e and then the letter of the weapon will tell you its properties (or use x in stores). If it's not fully identified, use *identify* (Scroll, spell, town service).

Even Identified it tells you little about many of the brands. Like (Craft) this affects Craft School magic in some way I assume, but damned if I know...

It is also annoying to have Identify tell you basically nothing you didn't already know.

The brand is mostly flavour text. Armageddon tends to get damage boosts visible on inspect & often an element brand. Death is vampiric & sometimes poison resist or hold life. Craft is just an element brand. You can either *id them or sell a bunch of junk brands till you know all the flavours, but there is actually nothing there that doesn't show up by inspect if fully *ided, except perhaps blessed which gets rid of the pointy penalty on a good priest.

The brand is mostly flavour text. Armageddon tends to get damage boosts visible on inspect & often an element brand. Death is vampiric & sometimes poison resist or hold life. Craft is just an element brand. You can either *id them or sell a bunch of junk brands till you know all the flavours, but there is actually nothing there that doesn't show up by inspect if fully *ided, except perhaps blessed which gets rid of the pointy penalty on a good priest.

It might just be the color text wording. The block of text saying that an item might still have hidden powers to be revealed by *ID or selling should probably go away once the item is *ID'd.

Back in Ang/Zang days one of the primary reasons to *ID was as a protection from memory-loss. Is that still the case? I could swear my now dead Ninja forgot ID'd items on several occasions.

Yeah unless you're a no-spoilers kind of person, Easy lore turns id into *id & makes the game a lot easier to play. Though I think it's actually easy-id & easy lore is monster id. There are 2 settings under = to play with when starting the character.

@Wobbly, oh yeah. I always mix those two up since I'm thinking of Stone of Lore.

It mainly makes the game easier by virtue of being less obnoxious to play. *ID* is probably one of the dumbest mechanics I've encountered in a loot simulator. If I wanted to enjoy IDing items, I'd play Brogue or something.

I had always considered easy_id/lore as spoilerish, cheat mode. Might as well, save file dupe.
But given the difficulty, sigh...

I think Chris feels the same about them, given their in-game descriptions...
But when you've already played a bunch, it's better to just be able to read which half dozen spells one of the 1500 monsters has instead of remembering. If my savefile persisted between versions I'd have 100% accurate info on everything except the changes in the new version.
You could probably get a lot farther with save file duplication than by turning on easy lore/id, but it would be a lot more unfun!

I had always considered easy_id/lore as spoilerish, cheat mode. Might as well, save file dupe.
But given the difficulty, sigh...

There's no wrong way to play the game. One player's "cheating" is another player's "changing the game so it's more fun for them."

I used to remove the MULTIPLY flag from monsters in ToME 2 because I got sick of the dungeons getting taken over by flying breeding monsters all the time (which, due to the use of trees for walls, meant the monsters effectively had passwall). It made the game slightly easier, in that I wouldn't have to abandon levels as often, but it made it vastly more enjoyable as well. In general, creators make the game that they think is best, and they deserve the benefit of the doubt...but they're not always right!

trying a fresh Monk, with all easy's on, and virtues off.
One thing I noticed very quickly, Monks absolutely suck versus breeders.
And being a 'Sexy' Monk none of the breeders ever stop breeding and take a nap. LOL